Template For Employee Handbook Small Business – Starting a new position at a new company can often seem overwhelming, with lots of new faces, information and policies to learn.
But providing an employee handbook to your new hires at the start of their employment (think: first day) is a great way to make sure the employee has all the information they need and has a resource to keep coming back to if they have one. questions.
Template For Employee Handbook Small Business
The employee handbook is the holy grail of your company. It contains everything someone could possibly want to know about working in your organization. It’s basically your company’s “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”
Amazing Employee Handbook Examples (and Free Template)
While you may not include an entire section on towels, your employee handbook is one hundred percent your “Don’t Panic” document.
If you’re creating your first employee handbook or updating an existing one, read on. I’ll explain what you should include in your handbook, along with some employee handbook best practices and design tips. I’ve also included pre-made employee handbook templates and lots of example employee handbooks.
An employee handbook is a document created by an employer (often the HR team) to convey employment and job information that employees need to know. Sometimes known as an “employee handbook,” “personnel handbook,” “company policy manual,” or even a “culture code,” employee handbooks are given to new hires after they accept an offer letter.
Employee handbooks are essential human resources, along with HR reports, performance reviews and incident reports, so it’s important to get it right.
Free Employee Handbook Templates (7)
Employee handbooks and policy manuals may look similar, but they are two very different things. An employee handbook tells your employees what to expect and should be written in easy-to-understand language. A policy manual, on the other hand, is a document that tells your employees how to do things, and may include more technical information.
For example, you’ll tell your employees in your employee handbook that they can telecommute for a month at a time (one of the perks at !), but you don’t have to go into the finer details in your handbook. You should save practical information, such as how to claim your remote month and what the expectations are for telecommuting, in your policy manual.
The information in your employee handbook should match the information in your policy handbook, but it should be a taster, not a full policy. Think of your policy manual as a terms and conditions document.
If you haven’t yet devoted time to writing and designing an employee handbook – you’re probably not the only one. Especially new and small companies often neglect to create a handbook for employees. But as your company grows, it’s useful to create a central space where all your processes and policies will live early on.
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Employee handbooks are incredibly effective in maintaining a positive workplace culture and integrating newcomers into the team. An employee handbook sets clear expectations for all employees to ensure that everyone within the organization can stay on the same page. In doing so, employee handbooks help establish a culture where issues can be addressed fairly and consistently.
The employee handbook serves not only your new staff, but also your old staff. At all levels and stages in your company, employee handbooks can be useful. As mentioned, manuals can provide newcomers with an introduction to your company and its internal structure.
Employee handbooks can provide a clear understanding of what their superiors expect of them. They can ensure that policies, procedures and work practices are carried out fairly and rigorously, eliminating confusion and misalignment within your team.
Handbooks can be a handy tool for your company to show how important your employees are to you – it shows through the information you consider important in your handbook (think support initiatives and inclusive efforts).
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Finally, manuals function as a means of information communication to facilitate the integration of employees within the company, while also dedicated to fostering a sense of belonging among teams.
Every company will have different needs, but here’s an overview of what you should include in a standard employee handbook:
What should be included in an employee handbook will vary from company to company depending on company size and industry. If you are a large organization with hundreds of employees, your employee handbook will likely be much larger and more detailed than the employee handbook distributed in smaller and/or less bureaucratic companies.
That being said, writing a great employee handbook relies on a thorough understanding of the company and its culture.
Small Business Employee Handbook Template
An employee handbook is primarily an employee-related document, so this is the ideal place to outline your employees’ employment rights and obligations, but in plain English instead of the legal jargon native to contracts.
If you are creating an employee handbook for the first time, it can be helpful to speak with members of senior management. Ask them what they think is the most important thing to convey to new hires. Making sure everyone is on the same page about expectations, policies and culture from the start is a great way to start the onboarding process.
Every great employee handbook starts with a great overview. Make sure you take the time to pre-plan the content of your employee handbook before diving into it. This will ensure that you include all the necessary materials to make your manual effective.
Employee handbooks are truly a choose-your-own adventure – no one scenario fits all scenarios. Although the information included in each employee handbook fits into a set of common categories, the depth to which companies will go within each category depends on various factors such as company size, company industry, company location(s), company culture, etc.
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See below for examples of what to include in your employee handbook. Feel free to choose which topics are most relevant to your business or go all the way and include the whole package.
Once you’ve chosen what to include, you can set up a table of contents. This will help you manage the rest of your employee handbook and make sure you don’t miss anything. The table of contents is also a great way for your employees to jump to a section quickly.
Next, you need to choose a design style for your employee handbook. Some larger organizations will have an in-house design team, but if you’re faced with designing a company employee handbook yourself, a pre-made template can be a great place to start.
Use icons, images, tables, illustrations, charts and graphs in your employee handbook to break up your content to make it interesting and engaging to look at. These elements will keep your readers engaged and entice them with the included materials.
Nine Tips For Writing An Employee Handbook
You can use this to highlight important information that you want your audience to pay special attention to. In this example of an employee handbook, icons are used to help show new employees what to expect on their first day at the company.
Using visuals also helps keep the reader’s attention. An employee handbook contains so much information that it can be quite overwhelming, so avoid large blocks of text whenever possible.
New to graphic design and not sure how to use icons effectively? Watch: Everything You Need to Know About Icons (In Under 3 Minutes)
Consistent design is key to creating professionally branded internal communication documents. When you create an employee handbook, you’re giving new hires a taste of the company and its culture—so it’s especially important to use your company’s brand guidelines.
How To Create An Employee Handbook [guide & Free Template]
With the My Brand Kit tool, business users can upload their company’s fonts, color palettes and logos and see them instantly applied to an employee handbook template.
The psychology of color is something you may not have heard of, but you’re sure to experience. Just as some colors like red and orange are warm to us, they also feel friendly and welcoming. Blue and green can feel cool or peaceful.
It’s important that the colors you use in your employee handbook reflect your organization and your company culture. In this example, the color palette is very simple, only white, gray and green, which looks modern and clean.
Your employee handbook should be an evergreen resource in your company, and one that employees return to regularly. But when your employees check your employee handbook again, they’ll likely be looking for a specific piece of information.
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Help your employees locate the information they need more quickly by using headers and subheadings in your employee handbook.
Avoid creating the dreaded “wall of text” in your employee handbook by breaking it up into lists, columns, or boxes. Columns are a great way to keep readers engaged with your writing. Our brains love lists for many different reasons (this New Yorker article is a good roundup!), so make sure you break down complex information into manageable chunks.
A highlight box is a great way to highlight the most important information on a page. In many examples of employee handbooks like this one, key policy dates or anything else are highlighted in a different color box. This tells your employees that this information